Fashionable Impure Instructions
by Dearest's Historic Cadre
Summary: A prequel to 'Aladdin'. Sex! Deceit! Sorcery! Torture! Everyone's favourite evil Grand Vizier!
1. intro

Everything in Agrabah was baking. The corners of mudhuts crinkled at the edges, and their roofs were covered with veins of cracks. The fish in the palace fountain lay quite still and lethargic, overwhelmed by the scent of cooking goldfish. Street merchants moaned their wares to the still, angry air and clapped clammy feet in clammy sandals against the bone-dry dirt.

The Royal Vizier was working in the great marble hall he had, somewhat haphazardly, transformed into an office. Despite the cool of the white marble, a thin line of sweat ran out from under his turban and balanced precariously on the end of his nose. Its progress was watched with fascinated disgust by his secretary, one Suzuki Matsumame. She had served Jafar for some five years now and the physical imperfections of the brilliant and ruthless man never ceased to intrigue her. Beside her Iago lay helpless on his back, panting and cursing alternately.

Jafar leant back and winced as his shoulders stuck to the folds of his robe. "Read that back to me please, Suzuki." He observed his secretary with the same interested confusion as she viewed him. Jafar, prior to his appointment as Chief Advisor to the childish sultan, had travelled extensively in the Oriental lands, believing them to be the very pinnacle of cultured civilisation. (Certainly the great Chinese Grand Vizier Fa Ho Sun had taught him many wonderous methods of torture using nothing more than one simple knife.)

He watched Suzuki's mouth as she recited back his instructions to the Lord High Taxgatherer. Her teeth had been improperly formed and no surgery had been attempted to correct this. When she shut her lips, a few misshapen teeth protruded onto her lower lip. It had been a deformity that had repulsed him when they first met. He had been touring Japan, much feted by the Shintos and Taoists who found his strict religion amusing. Thinking to provoke him, they had taken him to the finest geisha house in Kyoto. All the women there were what they called 'fragrant blossoms', save for Suzuki, whose otherwise agreeable looks were marred by her mouth. When he had inquired why they kept a malformed drudge about the place, they replied, "She makes good conversation." Jafar had summoned her, shuddering each time he looked at her mouth (for the teeth made drinking sake a difficult and ungainly process and all too often involved the drenching of her chin), and found her to be an exceptionally intelligent person. Were it not for the restrictions of her gender, he would have even admired her.

Every evening he returned to the geisha district, and every evening he demanded Suzuki's awkward, clever presence. There had been must jesting about it; 'The humble man of Allah swayed by the ugliest blossom on the cherry tree!' But in truth, Jafar had recognised the fine, honed mind behind the facade, and like all would-be megalomaniacs wondered how he could turn the situation to his advantage. Moreover he soon found that her physical shortcomings were a blessing to Suzuki, who disliked men and was in love with another geisha.

He received news shortly thereafter that the Sultan had lost his first Grand Vizier to old age, and wished to grant him the honour of the post of Royal Advisor. For the first time in his excruciatingly structured life, Jafar had acted on impulse. He approached the mistress of Suzuki's teahouse with a considerable sum, and Suzuki herself with the seductive prospect of a new life away from those who reviled her, in a palace where she would have unlimited access to the Royal Harem. In such circumstances, neither woman could refuse.

He was brought back to the present day by the soft clearing of Suzuki's throat. She was watching him expectantly, and he realised he ought to have been listening.

"Geddon with it," snarled Iago. "Can't you just say, 'Take away _almost_ everything they've got then direct _most_ of it into the Royal Treasury'?"

"Diplomacy is necessary, Iago," Jafar counselled. "Be patient."

"They're taxgatherers, Jay," Iago argued, using the nickname only he could get away with. "It's not as if they have consciences. Besides, you have to go and berate Princess Mardy. She set the fleabag on another Prince this afternoon." He rolled over and gave Jafar a beady look, as only a parrot can. "If she doesn't hurry up and marry one of your candidates soon, we might end up with a Sultan we can't control. Wouldn't that be," he smirked, despite the beak, "a novelty?"

Jafar laughed. That was the kind of joke that appealed to him.

Suzuki placed the script down gently, wiping the sweat from her palms on her kimono. That was another thing that confused Jafar- her kimonos. To his eyes, accustomed to modesty and restraint in the dress of females, the kimonos were garish and overdecorated, placed on a body hipless, breastless and androgynous.

"It's fine, honourable one," she said, in broken Arabian. "I believe this draft is sufficient. With your permission, I will attend the Council of Elders...informally."

"Keep your ears open, Suzuki," Jafar said, more or less automatically. Suzuki never once had failed him. "Come, Iago. I suppose we ought to get the unpleasant business over with. Pretty girls make for ugly tempers, don't they?"


	2. pretty girls ugly tempers

"NO!" had been Princess Jasmine's first word, and she was using it in abundance right now.

Jafar was currently on one knee, wishing she would grant him permission to stand up. The floor was beautiful and expensive and very, very hard. "But Princess," he began, his usual opening gambit in any conversation with Jasmine.

"I refuse to be treated in this subjective, unjust fashion!" shouted Jasmine, tossing her luxurious braid over one exposed shoulder. The flagrancy made Jafar grit his teeth and he decided to stand up anyway. On his shoulder, Iago was snickering. "I will marry whoever I choose," she added, taking deep breaths through her nostrils. "If my husband is to rule wisely, he will need the support of a woman who loves him. None of the princes you push at me make me feel any emotion except irritation. And pity."

"Your love is neither sufficient nor necessary," the Vizier told her, in the drawling tone that made her want to spit in his elegant eyes. "If your husband is to rule wisely, he will trust the advice of his loyalist and wisest advisors, the men who had aided and abetted his predecessor." He smiled like a snake.

Princess Jasmine opened her doe-like eyes very wide, and her mouth fell open with horror and surprise. By and by, she closed it and cried, "Oh no, Jafar. You shall not advise any ruler after my father. I shall see to it myself that you never lay the curse of your _advice_ on any other man!" At this last prolific proclamation the Princess' voice fell in on itself, and she turned and stalked out, lest Jafar notice she was weeping.

"Did you notice she was weeping?" Iago demanded gleefully.

"I did," Jafar replied with a smile, though his heart was troubled. It would be exceptionally inconvenient if Jasmine had worked out he held more than just a little power over the Sultan's decision making process. If she found out... Jafar sighed inwardly. If she found out, having her killed and finding another suitable heir would take _months_. Besides, it was a pity. She was such a finely crafted specimen of a female.


	3. two way mirror

Jafar lay fully clothed that night on his bed. The cloth was ruby coloured and matched the eyes in his cobra staff. He liked the colour red.

Iago was perched on a high table near his head, drinking from a silver bowl Jafar had filled with a strong liqueur native to Agrabah. The parrot drank, of course, like a bird, and was pretty inebriated already. Jafar toyed with his immaculate beard, coaxing it into tighter curls, and watched him.

"Iago," he said finally.

"Jay?" Iago looked up and hiccuped.

"How long do birds live?" asked Jafar, in an unusually quiet voice. Iago gave him a funny look.

"You're not thinking of doin' me out of a lifetime, are ya?" he inquired suspiciously, and when Jafar shook his head slowly, he said, "I dunno. How many parrots do you know who can outthink the idiots who feed them crackers?" He laughed and dipped his head fully into the bowl.

Jafar twisted his beard into such a tight spiral several hairs broke loose. He yelped, unaccustomed to suffering physical pain, and let go hurriedly. "Jasmine plans to have me executed, I think," he said softly. "I will make preparations for you to flee with Suzuki... but I should have liked to take you with me into the afterlife." He turned and fixed Iago with such a baleful glare that the parrot sobered up instantaneously.

"Yeah, and if I had lips I'd kiss you," he said nervously. "Look, enough with this death talk, okay? You're Jafar, you don't _die_. Moulder maybe. Lurch. But not actual dying." When this exacted no response, Iago plunged for an escape route. "Did you hear what Suzuki picked up from the Council of Elders? They're seriously discussing the Cave of Wonders and the Djinn of the Lamp. Apparently a few freelance sorcerers have been getting funny visions..." He trailed off. "I don't mind working tonight, checking out back alley gossip, that sort of thing. Might be onto something, eh? That lamp would solve all your problems." He attempted a snicker, but it died, dry and worried, in his throat.

Jafar, thankfully, had been distracted from his morbid thoughts and was stroking his swollen nose thoughtfully. "Yes, Iago, what an idea. Why not? Why not indeed." Iago, grateful for the escape route, told him not to wait up and dived for the nearest open window. It had been left ajar in the vain hope that some cooler night air would loosen the thick coils of heat around the bedroom, but the air all over Agrabah was burnt.

Once he was sure his feathered friend had completely vacated the premises, Jafar got up and walked to a red and gold tapestry, presented to him by the Chinese Grand Vizier, his mentor and teacher. Fa Ho Sun would have been very pleased if he ever discovered the use his protégé had for this tapestry, which sadly he never would due to an extremely messy death at the hands of a mob of royalist Imperial Swordsmen.

Jafar rolled up the tapestry and looked into the world's first two-way mirror (which he had invented, after much injurious experimentation, himself). He was peered through a window into the distinctly Japanese-influenced bedroom of Suzuki. She was serenely undressing, a long and complicated process as her _obi_ was undoubtedly the most intricate piece of engineering in the entire palace. Jafar watched with impatience.

Naked, Suzuki presented a wholly confusing sight to Jafar's crumpled, neglected libido. She was fantastically white, rather frighteningly so, and so slender and curveless was her physique that only the delicate simplicity of the darkness between her legs and the dip of her waist marked her out as a woman. Her face was no less ugly, and in fact in contrast to the ethereal perfection of her belly and thighs it was hideous. Yet night after night, when Jafar was sure Iago was out on 'night operations' and he was unlikely to be disturbed by the palace guards, he would roll up the tapestry and watch Suzuki take from her lacquered cupboard a smooth, thick instrument of about eight inches and place it in the unfathomable depths of her second mouth.

Unknown to Jafar, Suzuki was fully aware of the true nature of the large mirror on her wall. For some reason, it presented a wholly confusing conundrum to Suzuki's lesbian, feminist sensibilities. Not only was it blatant exploitation of her position as a servant and a woman, but it was also rather gross. She had a fairly shrewd idea of what Jafar did whilst he watched her, and if this mental image was not disgusting enough she had to add the extra, impossible element: _it was Jafar doing it_. Yet night after night, she took her little toy out of her cupboard and spent fifteen minutes theatrically writhing, thrusting and groaning. Her training as a geisha had left her with enviable predictive powers, for indeed after fifteen minutes Jafar had quite finished, and panting with damp exhaustion he would exit the bedroom for his private bath, and wallow in the water and his overwhelming sensations of satiation and self-hatred. Suzuki would then cease the dramatics and take herself and her toy down to the harem, where her lovemaking was actually quiet and restrained.

Tonight, however, Jafar was nervous and worried for his future. The prospect of death at the hands of 'the shrew', as he liked to think of the Princess, distracted and woed him far more than he would care to admit even to Iago. It was these strange feelings of dread that led him to act, for the second time in his life, on impulse.

What surprised him was how unsurprised Suzuki was to see him there. She sat up, closed her legs, put her toy on her inlaid table and said, "Well?"

Jafar stared at her, at loss. He stood where he was, banging one fist against his thigh, looking rumpled, flustered and uncomfortable. The door slowly swung shut behind him. "Er," he said, eloquently. Then, without further preliminaries, he started to undress.

Suzuki watched him with considerable interest. It would only be the third time she had been called upon to gaze on a naked male countenance, since during her geisha days her sexuality, her features and her respectability had prevented her from becoming an expert. Besides, she had always wondered what Jafar looked like underneath all those robes. She was interested, but not altogether shocked, to find he was more or less a skeleton, swarthy and sallow, with lank muscle stretched tight under ill skin. His torso was covered with numerous discolorations and his bones protruded dismally. He was bald, but that appeared to be the shaving of his head.

He looked on her with rather more desire than she looked on him. For the first time in her life she felt beautiful.


	4. jafar and suzuki

Having sex with Jafar, Suzuki discovered, was very much like fighting with him.

He knew exactly what it was he wanted to achieve, and did not care what he did to achieve it. Twice Suzuki had to rake her nails down his skinny face to prevent him twisting her thigh out of her hip socket, and throughout he kept one hand twisted in her hair, half scalping her in the process.

When he had achieved his goal, he lay on top of her for a while, gasping for air. Suzuki thought longingly of the piles of absorbent rice-paper on the top of the cupboard, but for such a stick figure of a man Jafar was surprisingly heavy. She resigned herself to the unpleasant necessity of sleeping in the damp patch.

Eventually the Grand Vizier slipped nimbly off her and began dress, with more deftness than his undressing. There was a strange calmness about him that silenced Suzuki, a kind of clinical exactness that took the horror out of the previous quarter of an hour. He did not look at her once, but turned on his heel and left the room for his own, before Iago got in.

She was still stunned at the strange night, but didn't let this prevent her from unlocking a teachest and taking from it a packet of leaves and making herself a cup of horrible herb tea. It would prevent any unfortunate mini Jafars happening to her.


	5. trinkets with their own poetry

Iago was most disgruntled to find his two friends unresponsive and stupid the next morning.

"I said," he bellowed, "the Cave of Wonders is WAKING UP! Which is more than I could say for you two," he added, darkly.

Suzuki's mouth hung slightly open, a thin cobweb of saliva strung between her lower lip and her left incisor. She could not focus on the table in front of her. Jafar's eyes were as red as his staff's, and he yawned widely every few minutes. Both of them had been unable to sleep after the night's events, and only now were their bodies demanding payment.

Jafar managed to rouse himself. "Oh... Iago... that is good news." He yawned again, and Iago had to fight the temptation to pluck a tooth out of the great gawping head.

"You want to know some better news, Jay?" he snapped.

"Do tell," murmured Jafar, massaging his bony forehead with serpentine fingers.

"That trinket you confiscated off the Egyptian trader..." Iago waited expectantly. The public beheading of the rebellious vendor had been one of Jafar's finer epiphanies for crowd control and Iago was sure he would want to gloat briefly over it. However, no exultation was forthcoming so he continued, a little ruffled; "It is linked to the activation of the Cave of Wonders."

"Oh?" Jafar feigned interest briefly then slumped onto his palms. Iago sighed, wandered over, and pecked the man sharply on the finger.

"Yeah, 'oh'," he said, when Jafar yelped and looked at him blearily. "It's got its own poem and everything. You like poetry, Suzie?" he asked, directing his verbal onslaught with suddenness at Suzuki, who had been surreptitiously falling asleep.

"V- very much," she mumbled. Normally she cooed over Iago in a contained manner, like a distant but adoring mother, and Iago responded with a kind of Oedipal fervour that often irritated Jafar into throwing cashew nuts at him. Iago strutted over to her side of the table and hopped lightly onto her shoulder, shedding a few feathers along the way through sheer annoyance.

"Then listen to this," he suggested, and leaned his beak to her ear.

"_The desert sand is hurting for a light,_

_For eternity ill makes a proper torch._

_It finds and flames a scarab into gold_

_And stars to scar the desert night, and scorch._

"_Now the desert sand can see its fleshes,_

_And hates the eyes that forces it to know_

_The treasured hidden bowl of its belly._

_It roars and paws the air, that life is so._

"_No treasure sates the desert sand enough_

_Unless it finds its diamond in the rough."_

"Iago," Jafar drawled, "that was derivative in the extreme."

"I didn't write it!" Iago exclaimed, affronted. "I'm just being," here his voice changed to a distinct sneer, "_your faithful slave_, and doing what I'd said I'd do. Get information. And now I have. So there." He fell silent and started to sulk.

Jafar stretched. "Mmm...Very well. We will see if we can find the other half of the scarab beetle."

Iago and Suzuki both stared at him. At length, Suzuki said, "...Pardon, honourable one?"

The wasir sighed deeply. "Try to pay attention, Suzuki. The activation of the Cave of Wonders is linked to a golden scarab beetle, which then 'forces it to see'- I assume it either provides light or provides eyes. However, I only have one half of this 'trinket', as dear Iago calls it, therefore I have not been able to locate the fabled cave. We must find the other half."

"And the last line?" asked Iago testily, as he was most aggrieved he had not been able to work this out himself. "What's this rubbish about diamonds in the rough? You don't find diamonds among the rough. Trust me, I've tried nicking their stuff and all I ever get is paste gems. Has that got something to do with the lamp?"

Jafar stroked his beard in a leisurely manner. "Indeed, it may well do. For legend has it that the lamp is a crude, battered looking instrument of little surface value. Yet truly," he laughed dryly, "it would be a gem to own!"

"I don't think that's quite the interpretation the poem intends," Suzuki ventured, but was waved into silence by Jafar- something that angered her more than his forced entry into her room and person. She reached up for Iago from her shoulder and hugged him to her sparse bosom, stroking the scruffy red head. Iago sighed contentedly. Jafar flashed them a private look of fury, but controlled his voice exquisitely.

"Suzuki, you will go and inform our hapless little clown that I cannot be summoned into his foolish fat presence today, as I am ill. I believe the heat has got to me at last. I apologise for the inconvenience of not being allowed to stuff crackers down Iago's throat in my presence. Also inform him the abysmally idiotic Prince Ahmed al-Jihad is visiting in three days, and he had better get his wench of a daughter kitted out in appropriate and modest clothing. Dress that up in diplomacy and deliver it, will you?" He yawned again, and did not meet Suzuki's furiously flaming eyes.

"May I venture another translation of the poem?" she suggested in a voice so cold the heat of the room seemed to falter in its onslaught.

"No," purred Jafar, "you may not. Do as you are told."


	6. jafar and suzuki again

The day toiled on, leaving trails of sweat wherever it went. People were too hot to move. It was almost too hot to breathe.

When the night came, a slight repose came with it. The city woke up as the sun edged away, dragging a cloak of star-studded black behind it. Suzuki brushed out her hair in the ridiculous mirror, her broken teeth bared in what might be a smile, and what might be a snarl. She did not look round as her door pulsed softly open.

When she finally condescended to turn around, she found Jafar sitting on the end of her bed, fully clothed. He was not looking at her but at a long blue feather. He turned it over and over in his fingers, apparently hypnotised by its rotations.

She glided to his side- another habit passed down from her geisha training. "Is that Iago's?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?" she asked, cautiously. Jafar's affections for his 'pet' were temperamental and changeable. If she was seen to favour Iago too much, Jafar would take it out on either of them in one of his rare but lethal explosions of rage. If he felt she was being callous, he would treat her with exceptional coldness for weeks on end and spoil Iago silly.

"Asleep, and dead drunk," Jafar replied without emotion. "He does not know it, but he possesses an animal instinct, and it is working overtime whether he is aware of it or not. He doesn't normally shed flight feathers, you notice. He can tell there is... tension." Finally he looked at his secretary. "You have been discourteous to me all day."

Suzuki's nostrils flared out and her eyes uncurled open. Her ugliness was complete. "How dare you!" she spat, in far better Arabian than she had ever spoken before. "I! Discourteous! Do you not think I know why that mirror is in my room? Do you not think I have been waiting like a peasant on death row for the day you would choose to come to the other side of the reflection? These five years have been lived in an anxious sickness for the time you prove yourself to be nothing more than a base, pathetic, uneducated _man!_" This last insult was also declared in passionate Japanese, then Suzuki fell silent.

"A mere man?" Jafar asked quietly. He was coolly watching the feather in his fingers, but Suzuki had served him long enough to see the warning signs. The loose skin under one eye was twitching unpleasantly.

"YES!" screeched Suzuki. "A mere man! Oh, I used to admire you for being so _controlled_, so very _collected_ and _cunning. _There was nothing in you but a lust for power, and I understood and respected that in you. It placed you above other humans, other males." She spat the word out of her feminine lips, as if it enraged her to have it resting on her tongue. "And you," she continued in a hiss, "you used to have a respect for me, and my person. That too I admired in you, for it is a fool who does not recognise intelligence when he sees it. You saw me not as a woman but as a man in a woman's body. You and you alone understood. Or- or at least you seemed to," and here she broke off, her eyes filling with tears she had no desire to weep.

"You certainly chide like any woman," replied Jafar, watching the tears make their treacherous way down the round cheeks.

Suzuki cursed him in Japanese. "That is because a dumb woman is what you make of me!" she shrieked, then added, babbling, "And you didn't want to hear my interpretation of the poem, for all it might have helped you. There was a time when you would have listened dispassionately, damn you. I thought you understood me, but you don't understand at all, not at all. You- you didn't even try to give me any pleasure last night."

At this Jafar dropped the feather, aghast, and turned to her. "What?"

Suzuki repeated her accusation tearfully, wiping her streaming face on the sleeves of her kimono. It gave her ill-concealed pleasure that Jafar looked extremely discomfited at this outburst, and she was quietly revelling in her victory when Jafar snapped suddenly, "I didn't think women could."

Now it was Suzuki's turn to be aghast. "Excuse me?"

"I- I didn't think women could. You know. Feel any- achieve, you know, that." He stared blankly at a wall for a moment, then in a motion so sudden Suzuki stopped crying out of shock, smashed his fist into the bedstead. There was a crunching sound that Suzuki hoped would be the dicelike knuckles, but resolved itself to be the new dent in the wood. He was, to her tacit astonishment, blushing furiously. "I hate it," he added in his quiet, dangerous voice, "when there is something I don't know."

They sat side by side on the bed, consigned now to an awkward, post-argument silence.

"The Princess Jasmine wishes me to be executed," Jafar announced solemnly.

"I would have thought that was obvious," Suzuki told him levelly. She glided across the room to her washbasin and cleaned her stained face as best she could. It was still red and puffy when she glided back to her place on the bed.

"I mean, she seriously intends to put her fit of pique into practise," sighed the Grand Vizier. "And last night I- it weighed heavily on my mind. The- the things I have never achieved. I was always so careful with my life, you see, and so eager to make my way into power, I-" he broke off, but the explicit gestures that followed spelt out his meaning clearly enough. "I never did," he finished.

"Oh," said Suzuki. "Oh, I see." But it thrilled her, that moment. She was in a position of power; Jafar had chosen her over the many willing girls in the harem, or the noblewomen itching for favour, or the dancing girls in the brothels, all of them of his own race and religion. It _thrilled_ her.

So she took off his ornate turban and placed it on the floor beside his staff. She tugged her _obi_ free and slid out of her kimono, and slid her hands into the mysterious folds of his robes until she located the fastenings and freed him of them. She pulled him towards her deformed mouth and kissed him, the first kiss either of them had ever shared with another human being. For Suzuki's broken mouth was repulsive to the men who had paid for her and the women she courted vainly, and Jafar had never had time for kisses.

By and by, Jafar was balanced on his elbows above her. His elastic face clearly showed an expression of trepidation. He looked at her helplessly, then said, "What do you want me to do?"

Suzuki felt the same thrill of power walk its spidery way inside her skin. "Well, for a start do what you did last night," she told him. "But don't try to wrench me into new and unusual shapes this time." She was delighted to find Jafar did as he was told.

They spent a quiet, instructive evening exploring one another with rather more civility than the previous night's escapade, and by the time an hour or so had passed Jafar was pleased to discover his previous ignorance had been taught and relieved, and Suzuki, for all her preferences, was pleasantly alarmed to find she quite enjoyed Jafar's nude company.

They broke off and lay kissing. Both went about this operation with a certain amount of relish, since it was a hitherto undiscovered gratification.

Eventually Suzuki unpeeled free and lay her head on the Vizier's narrow chest. "Would you care to hear my interpretation of the poem_ now_?" she asked in a husky, cooing voice that Jafar completely failed to respond to.

"No," he said urbanely. "Write it up and send it to me." A flicker of anger passed across Suzuki's face but she suppressed it. "I don't really want to talk about any of those affairs right now."

"What would honourable master like to talk about then?" Suzuki asked. If she was being ironic, Jafar could not see her face and so ignored it suavely.

"Mmm... I don't know." Jafar felt strange. Never in his life had he ever felt contentment like this. It was as if he was butter and someone had melted him over something sweet and delicious. He was used to the tingle of power, the adrenalin of command, even the bizarre semi-bliss of his friendship with Iago. He understood the pleasure of sadism well enough, and oft used it to escape the heady pounding of megalomania. But this sleepy, peaceful sensation was something he had never encountered before. He struck out vaguely for something to say; "Don't you think we ought to dress Jasmine in a few more veils?"

Ah, thought Suzuki. Men are all the same. "To hide that pretty, tender little body? Only fourteen and yet already a woman."

"No... well, yes she is," Jafar conceded. "She's a very- yes. Once she's married, though, she'll be as much a bore as the late Sultana. I had to have her murdered, did I ever tell you?" Suzuki nodded. "It would be dangerous to have a mind that could oppose me in a position of power. I and I alone know how to govern this wretched little country." Suzuki nodded again, more enthusiastically. "Actually, I just thought it would look nice."

Suzuki was startled. "Veils? Look nice?" she repeated incredulously.

"Oh, you know," Jafar said absently. He was suspended between conversation and slumber, and not balancing on the line very well. "Last time the Sultan held an official dinner, Lady Njala... er, she wore lilac veils. It looked rather well, I thought. Although the blossom in her hair frankly clashed with the entire outfit."

"Oh?" Suzuki said weakly.

"When the harem girls go out shopping they sometimes wear rather pretty veils," Jafar continued, oblivious. "Transparent, of course, and whorish, but given their occupations that's no surprise. Have you ever noticed, by the way, how excellently dressed the harem girls are, when they are clothed? Well, of course you would have, you visit that place more times in a week than I ever have in a lifetime... I suppose they spend so much time stripped bare that clothing becomes a luxury, and they pay more attention to the way they're dressed. Or maybe they just want to look alluring?"

"Honourable master," Suzuki interrupted, "you want to talk about _clothes_?"

Jafar very suddenly turned over, so that Suzuki was faced with the rather less attractive view of his mottled back. She ran a wary finger down the spine, which tied his neck down like a chain of angry knots, and he shivered. "Perhaps I ought to be getting back to my room," he said, somewhat frostily. "Iago will wonder where I am."

"I very much doubt it, given that you informed me he is comatose," Suzuki sighed. "I'm sorry, Jafar. We can talk about anything you wish."

"Anything?"

"Anything."

He rolled back to face her and Suzuki was a little perturbed to see a wide, cruel grin on his face. "Can we _do_ anything?"

Suzuki hesitated. She had accompanied the Grand Vizier to some of his sub-ground nocturnal interrogations. He claimed he liked to 'work with his hands,' and that too much pure cerebration was exceptionally bad for the cerebrum. He enjoyed using a 'personal touch,' or so he told her. She had seen the twisted fire that stuttered up in his eyes when he gave the knife its final twist in what might have once been a person. However, she too was suffering from the same dulcet, soporific sensations that embalmed Jafar's body. This is why she nodded her head.

Jafar swung himself off the bed. Suzuki watched him with attention, for he moved with a snaky grace even without his robes and it was odd to behold. When he returned to the bed, he held her toy in one hand which (she couldn't help noticing) was trembling ever so slightly.

"Use it," he commanded. Suzuki hesitated just a moment too long. Jafar forced her down and plunged the instrument in himself. "Use it!" he hollered. "Use it! I'm on the other side of the reflections now, so use it, damn you!"


	7. the great iago mood barometer

Iago woke up with a splitting hangover the following morning. He struggled over to Jafar's bed to moan and demand a hair of fire-breathing minotaur that bit him, but was annoyed to find the bed was empty.

Further investigating, hampered by the parrot's violent desire to decorate the room with his supper, proved that the bed had not been slept in at all. Iago shifted uneasily, wondering where Jafar had gone. It was unlike the Vizier to not share in his fiendish plans, especially since the two had the same warped sense of humour and could cackle insanely at the really nasty bits. He tried to think but pain blocked him at every neurone, flourishing callous sensations that made Iago whimper. In the end he decided to give up and flap wearily to Suzuki's bedroom.

(It was fortunate for the wasir, the secretary and the bird that Jafar had risen early whilst Suzuki was still sleeping. He had watched her slumber with some interest, for she slept with her misshapen mouth wide open and had left a damp circular patch on the pillow.)

Suzuki was fully dressed, a little edgy and rather sore. She started when Iago scrabbled feebly at the door, and hurriedly started to boil a kettle. She took the horrible herbs out of her teachest then opened the door to admit the parrot, who just about had enough strength to hop onto her slippered foot and wail.

"Are my feathers green? Are my feathers green? Oh Allah, I'll never touch another drop of alcohol for as long as I live!" he groaned. "Just put me in a nice cool tomb somewhere, Suzie, and I can die in peace. Oh Allah, have mercy on this innocent little bird!"

"Innocent my foot," Suzuki retorted, scooping Iago off it. "You're about as innocent as the mistress of my teahouse back in Kyoto. Do you want a hangover cure, my little stupid beau?"

"I'll ignore that last part and wail, 'Yes,' in a plaintive manner, shall I?" Iago said sourly. He lay on his back on her tea table and watched her slowly pour out a syrupy liquid from her mysterious medicine cupboard. She was also making a uniquely foul-smelling cup of tea, which Iago looked at with disgust and edged away from as best he could. "What's in that poison you're giving me?"

"Tiger bone, among other things," the secretary said mildly, and tipped a sake cup full of the stuff into Iago's beak.

"HCK HCK HCK," Iago remarked, choking, then, "ERGH! ACK!" then, "Pity it wasn't Rajah minced up in there. Ooh Allah, that burns. Oooh!" He rose up and smiled slightly- the pain was already dissipating. "Good stuff, though," he added grudgingly. "You wouldn't happen to know where our pal Jafar is, would you?"

Suzuki's cup rattled as she put it down, but apart from that she remained inscrutable. "Probably up and bringing terror wherever he goes already," she said. "It is almost midday, Iago. You've been asleep a while- we were starting to think you would never awaken. Why do you have to drink so much, naughty parrot?"

Iago twinkled at her with incongruous charm. "Aha, you forget something about me. I may be handsome, strong, intelligent, witty, adorable and modest, but I am also... _an animal._"

Suzuki stared at the foot-high red and blue squawking apparition on her tea table. "Oh yes," she said woodenly, "I was forgetting, naturally."

"So, whether or not you know it, sister, I have an _animal instinct_." Iago sparkled triumphantly. "What d'you think of that, eh? No, don't answer! For the Great Iago Mood Barometer will now tell lowly human scum that He feels there is... _tension in the air._"

"Oh?"

"And He is also here to chide the lovely geisha- the tart with a heart, if you will- for being callous to our sensitive, soft-hearted friend Jafar."

Suzuki raised one of her eyebrows. She was prepared to let 'tart with a heart' go in the light of the scheming, power-crazed Vizier being described as sensitive and soft-hearted. "What grievous crime have I committed that so wounds honourable master, my moulting flapping conscience?"

"It's not so much what you have done," Iago replied, "as what you haven't done." Suzuki let out a snort of laughter, then indicated quickly that she was thinking of something else. Iago gave her a hard done by look, before continuing, "Jafar is squishier than he'd have all those blokes hanging upside down in his torture chambers know. If you poke him in the guts, will he not go 'squelch'? If you tickle him, will he not giggle like a harem girl then order you to be beheaded? Surely you must have noticed the way he looks at you sometimes?" Suzuki shook her head in silent wonder. "What the hell did they teach you at geisha school, flower arranging!"

"Yes," Suzuki said absently. "What do you mean, the way he looks at me? How long has this been going on?"

"He stares at you with this weird expression, like you're the most entertaining thing in this city," Iago replied scornfully. "That expression where his eyes are half hooded and his mouth is half parted and he's smiling a little half smile. You know what I'm talking about. I've seen you catch his eye and look away. I've seen you both turn away from the prettier slave girls and watch one another like teenage sweethearts!" He stopped to grin at Suzuki's furious flush. "For about three years- three years!- I've had to put up with it. And you two, being human and therefore bloody idiots, can't even notice your own emotions properly." He smirked evilly. "I think it's getting to Jay at last though, that or the heat, because he's started mumbling your name in his sleep."

As Iago was saying this, Suzuki was lifting the cup of foul tea to her lips. On the last sentence, however, she hesitated, then slowly lowered it before a drop passed down her throat.

"I see," she said.

It came to her in a sudden flash, akin to a knife being swiftly buried in her back before she could react to the pain, that she had been consciously avoiding an area of her mind for almost three years of the five years she'd known Jafar. Now it opened out like a wound and bled softly into the forefront of her mind.

"I see," she repeated, and got up to pour the tea down the drain.


	8. princess and paperwork

Jafar was in the marble hall cum office, chasing paperwork.

He had in front of him several ancient scrolls, each one of them contradicting one another, cross referencing one another and occasionally confusing themselves. He was trying to ascertain the origin and whereabouts of the Cave of Wonders and the lamp, and having a hard time of it. In the white marble, glowing with icy perfection, the black-clad Vizier and his yellowing work looked like an unsightly smear, or a wasp caught in a child's seaside ice cream.

He found his mind begin to drift away from the task in hand. There was one thing the scrolls agreed on, and that was the amount of wishes: three. One scroll suggested the appropriate formula for the three wishes would be to ensure health, wealth and happiness. He wondered exactly how he would achieve his own health, wealth and happiness.

Naturally, being the Sultan would mean I was wealthy, he pondered. Not only would I be an exceptionally rich man, but under a tyrannical and despotic rule I do believe I could make this country prosper, even make it the founding block of an Empire. Yes! I would wish to be Sultan, then use my innate genius to add to my wealth from there! After all, under my guidance, has the Sultan not already found himself ruling an economically stable and efficiently cosmopolitan city?

How to secure my health? Hmm. A harder one, for in this measly human body I am constantly besieged by aches and pains. Often I dream of having greater power in my magehood, that I might magic the ills away- there! An all-powerful sorcerer! Since I am so busy ruling Agrabah for the addlepated twit I have no time to perfect my art, otherwise I would have become a great sorcerer long ago. An all powerful sorcerer! Life would indeed be so much easier.

But my happiness? What surplus requirement would ensure my happiness?

Unbidden, an image of Suzuki glided across his mind, bowed to his astonished consciousness, and exited as silently as she had come.

That was... strange, he thought, cautiously peering around his mind's eye to check the oddly alluring image had departed. Could it be that my happiness could be ensured by constant, mindless sex? But she was fully clothed... Surely... surely I don't want... Could it be... no... that all I want is lo-

This was such a weird and wonderful novelty that Jafar laughed aloud.

It was in this amused, chuckling state that Princess Jasmine found him. She strode up to the desk and rapped her small fist on the table. "Jafar!" she snarled in a voice much senior to her fourteen years. "I have come to tell you that I refuse to meet the Prince!"

Jafar wiped a tear of laughter from his kohled eyes and turned a benevolent smile on the Princess. It was like being grinned at by a cobra. "Ah... Princess. But of course you don't _want_ to meet the Prince. I quite understand!"

Jasmine was taken aback. "What? You- you do?"

The Grand Vizier's grin widened. In front of him he could see Agrabah's beloved princess- a sweaty, good-looking, moody teenager with opinions coming out of her ears. Never before had he seen her quite so young, yet at the same time quite so womanly.

"Did your father ever talk to you about your mother?" he asked dreamily.

"He sometimes mentions her," Jasmine ventured cautiously. "I get the impression they didn't talk much."

"Like you, she married young and was pregnant at seventeen," Jafar said, lost in the past. "You take after her, I believe, Princess. She was a clever, mouthy, difficult lady." Jasmine glowed at the adverse compliment. "She often... tried to steer the country through her husband. But as you say, they did not get on very well. She was barely out of childhood when she married, and being forced to grow up so quickly she often blundered and became confused. She was frightened of going wrong, as there was none to help her. I offered my help, you understand, but she was proud and, oh, so much like you! She disliked me, Princess. I'm afraid that was her downfall." He smiled, serpentine, and reached across for Jasmine's hand. "I hope you will not make the same mistake. Perhaps you ought to... visit her grave. You will find she was still young when she died."

Chastised and disturbed, Jasmine snatched her hand back, and in a compulsive gesture drew her sparse sleeves around her bare shoulders. Without saying another word she turned and left the marble hall. Jafar was still smiling.


	9. varying forms of torture

A month ambled past. The heat leant heavily on Agrabah, climbing up the horizon and squeezing the life out of the skyline.

Jasmine consistently refused to see her suitors. A strange change had come over her demeanour. She played more with Rajah and her little doves, covered the womanly extremities of her body, sat and talked a great deal with her father. Sometimes she did not even talk, but laid her beautiful head on his ample chest, listening to him tell her stories about nothing much in particular. She visited her mother's grave often, with fresh young flowers that always withered away by nightfall. Her modest dress was particularly noted with disappointment by the rest of the palace.

Jafar mentioned it one day to Iago and Suzuki, whilst they were debating a suitable policy for dealing with trade unions. Suzuki had looked up, smiled wonkily (she could not help it) and stated, "She doesn't want to be a woman yet. She's hanging on to the last of her childhood."

That evening Jafar did not go to Suzuki. Iago had located the whereabouts of a friend of the Egyptian vendor, who knew where the other half of the 'trinket' was located. He was about forty, bald, with a strong profile and coarse, casteless hands. He was also an honourable fellow and sat many hours with the tall dark stranger in the tavern, repeatedly refusing to tell him where to go.

The next day he was arrested on charge of plotting with the enemies of Agrabah and high treason. He was informed the tall dark stranger had been the general of an enemy army, and the entire tavern could swear on their lives he was a traitor. He was ceremoniously dragged to a dungeon, where the stench of dead flesh and the cold of murder chilled the summer air and snapped the summer light out. Heartless hands tied him to a rack.

A shadow disengaged itself from a noisome corner and stepped forward. It was the tall dark stranger.

"You!" the potential informant gagged.

"Isn't there something you'd like to tell me?" whispered Jafar. He lifted up a knife and showed the edge to the man. It was clean and true. When the man had not answered, Jafar had smiled with angelic delight and slowly, luxuriously, slid the knife underneath the skin, then slitted his way up the torso. The informant held back a shriek.

Jafar's expression was one of a man faced with a most divine beauty. "Do you know how much skin you can remove from a human being before they die?" he asked in a whisper. The informant whimpered and shook his head. "Neither do I. Yet. Where is the scarab?"

The screams were awful. The smell was worse. The strange hide that Jafar took from the torture chambers, however, was definitely the worst of all.

Two nights later, Jafar had made a small compilation of the relevant information he had acquired so far, and decided he deserved the night off. He had not visited Suzuki in her bedroom for almost four days.

He entered with characteristic silence, stripped Suzuki with fingers grown deft (though her _obi_ still presented a minor difficulty) and handed her the toy. This had become something of a ritual for them. Often Jafar was simply stood stock still in front of her, perhaps with one hand planted in the middle of her chest to hold her down, and watched, sweat drops beading on his high forehead. On this occasion he did not touch her but curled into a foetal position and watched her from the floor. His breathing was uneven.

When he was satisfied, he would join Suzuki upon the bed. Suzuki had learned to be malleable, otherwise she ended up with bruises. Some nights Jafar was tender and responsive, working to make her ripple under his fingers. On these nights she had looked deep into his elegant black eyes and seen, staring boldly back at her, the very expression Iago had described with such terrible glee. Other nights Jafar was selfish and priggish, barely paying attention to her and simply working to achieve his own ends before falling into a profound sleep on top of her. Other nights still he paid especial attention to her body, but only to cause her unusual and fascinating pain. She had become accustomed to all these facets of her honourable master, and would react accordingly.

Tonight, she was pleased to find, Jafar was in 'tender and responsive' mode. Some time passed, politely averting its eyes.

Afterwards, they lay in the warm exhaustion side by side, holding hands. Suzuki turned to Jafar.

"Listen, Jafar," she said seriously. "I've something urgent to tell you."


	10. at your age?

Deep into the darkness that night, Jafar blundered up into his laboratory, behind the secret passage. He was dressed chaotically and his expression was dragged into a grimace of shock. He found Iago sitting on his mystic hourglass, eating grapes. "Good..." Iago glanced at the hourglass, "morning Jay. You look like you've had an exciting night."

Jafar should have taken this moment to remind himself that Iago knew nothing about his and Suzuki's dangerous liaison. Instead he burst out bluntly, "I'm going to be a father, Iago."

Iago laughed and tossed another grape into his beak. "At your age? A father? Hahahahaha! Hahaha... haha... ha...ha..." He fell silent, awed. "Wait... you're _actually_ going to be a father?"

"Yes."

"As in, you fathered a child?"

"Yes."

"As in, you've been-"

"Yes!"

Iago stared at him, quite openly aghast. A half-chewed grape fell out of his maw. "How old _are_ you?" he demanded. "Actually, don't answer that, there's a more important question. _Who's the mother!_"

"Suzuki," Jafar said simply. Iago groaned.

"I knew it," was what he groaned. "I knew it. Animal instinct, I told her. Tension, I told her. But even the Great Iago Mood Barometer is a little too refined to notice when honourable master and secretary are going at it like a pair of heat-crazed rabbits." He stared at Jafar, who climbed lethargically up the stone steps to the hourglass, then gave up and sat on one, leaning heavily on his staff. "Allah, just look at you," he said, fluttering down with the grapes clasped in his feet. "You walk in and the tone of conversation is lowered _instantly_."

"I'm going to be a father," Jafar repeated, quietly. He moodily picked up his staff and started to hypnotise a nearby moth.

"At least _Suzuki_ is still young," Iago pointed out, relentlessly. "And, well, you've still got a black beard... Maybe it won't be too hard on the poor kid."

"When Princess Jasmine is twenty eight, my child will be the age she is now," Jafar said in wonder. Inexorably, he danced the moth closer to a flame underneath some noxious, poisonous experiment of his. The possessed moth fluttered delicately into a fiery suicide. "When I am an old, decrepit man, my child will be young, strong and in need of a father." His eyes flashed suddenly and three more moths were rushed to their burning doom. "I _must_ get hold of that lamp!"

The wasir and the parrot sat together. Iago pushed a grape into Jafar's hand and he ate it absentmindedly.

They talked the sun up together in low, friendly voices. They spoke of old times and moments now gone and opportunities lost. They talked about Suzuki in Japan, Suzuki in Agrabah, Suzuki as she would be with a baby at her breast. They laughed at old, sick jokes and experimented with evil cackles. When the dawn was completely stained, Iago said, "You know, Jay, I'm impressed there's enough human in you left to care."

Jafar smiled sadly. Iago suddenly felt quite anxious and reached for another grape, but they'd eaten them up when the sky was still black. "One day I shall become completely inhuman, Iago," he told Iago kindly, "and when that day comes, you will betray me. I pray I am weak and human for long enough."


	11. what she wears to please him

The months crawled past. The heat started to relent, gently, like a claw of a cat loosening its grip on the mouse. As if responding to the pressure of the heat being lifted, Suzuki's stomach started to swell.

At one point, the Sultan pottered over to see Jafar (for he was a little too afraid of his Grand Vizier to actually demand his presence) and said, "I don't want to rush Jasmine into marrying just yet. She still has two more years; she's still a child. Perhaps we could wait?" To his surprise, the Grand Vizier had bowed low and graciously, then looked up and replied,

"Of course, my liege. Most wise." And the Sultan could have sworn he winked.

Jafar told Iago and Suzuki later that afternoon. Suzuki was now was so round that Iago could happily sit on her belly, chuckling with avian delight every time he felt the baby move.

Iago frowned from where he was gently tapdancing, making Suzuki giggle. "Isn't that a bit dangerous? All those stupid princes you wanted to pick for her will get married, and then we might have to marry her to someone intelligent."

"I need a break from taming the shrew," Jafar replied, getting laboriously to his knees and kneeling beside Suzuki. "Besides, our time will be taken up with this Gazim person."

"A new discovery in the Cave of Wonders saga, Jafar?" Suzuki asked. She tickled Iago.

"Indeed," Jafar replied. "A horrible and ratty little wretch, I am given to understand, but an excellent throat slitter. I admire that quality in a man. Besides, one more year with her childhood will bring home to Jasmine how much of a woman she is destined to be."

"Or not," Iago said levelly, "because you're going to have her killed. Like her mummy."

Jafar hesitated, then lay his head against Suzuki's heavy stomach. He listened intently for a moment and smiled with pleasure as he felt his child give a sharp kick. "Well... I'm not sure murdering Princess Jasmine would be... the best policy."

Iago blinked. "What? Eh?"

"She is... someone's daughter. Someone has cared for her. She is more than just a playing piece in my brilliant plan, she is a person. A growing girl. I don't think, with that force of personality, I could have her... disposed of."

"Good gravy," Suzuki said, "fatherhood has made you soft."

Jafar smiled sweetly at her. Since becoming pregnant, Suzuki could no longer fit into her kimonos. Her stomach and, to the aesthetic delight of Jafar, her breasts had enlarged and rounded. He dressed her slender limbs in red harem trousers and a brief red top, allowing room for her belly and emphasizing her new, interesting curves. Her black hair was taken out of their elaborate geisha hairstyles and left to swing freely, like a flag, down her back. Despite her crooked smile, Jafar thought she was divinely beautiful.

He often sat with his head against her stomach, listening to the baby grow, and talking with Suzuki about nothing very much in particular. They kissed a lot, slow calm kisses that lingered and said far more than their vague, dreamy words could ever articulate. Iago watched them both with a funny sort of benevolence and a mild look of kindly sagacity, and all three of them thought, "Dear me, I'm getting so terribly soft in the head."

It was within Suzuki's ninth month that Jafar come wandering into her rooms, holding a small gold tiara, and found her lying in a pool of blood. Her gasps rasped across his nerves.


	12. the gold tiara

"Stop pacing," Iago instructed, pacing.

Jafar stopped pacing. Instead he began to throw the gold tiara from hand to hand, which in Iago's opinion was even worse. He dived sharply down, snatched the tiara out of its arc from palm to palm, flew back to his perch and dropped it there. "You're making me nervous, Jay," he mumbled.

"That was my intention," Jafar said shortly. "I need someone to share in my nervousness with me."

Iago shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "What's this thing here?" he asked, desperate to find some neutral topic of conversation. He pecked at the tiara.

"I made it for her, with my own two hands," Jafar said quietly. "I could think of no wedding ring fine enough for her fingers, but I thought- I thought it would look well in her hair..."

"Oh, Jay," Iago said. His voice cracked. "I- I'm going to flap about in the garden for a while. Knock some flamingos over. You know." He fluttered briefly onto Jafar's shoulder and squeezed it with his feet. "I'm sure Mr Doctor Type Person will report that she's okay," he added in a choke, and flapped wearily out towards the extravagant, morbid gardens.

Jafar reached up for the tiara just as the door creaked open and the physician slipped in.

"What news?" he asked harshly. The man, terrified as he was of the Grand Vizier, threw himself to the ground and trembled profoundly.

"Forgive me, lord, I tried everything. Everything! But her body cannot take it... You must either choose the child or the mother, lord. I can only have it so one survives."

Jafar stared through him, then into the reflection on the gold. His old, tired, malicious face blinked back at him. "Wait here," he instructed tonelessly, then swept away into Suzuki's quarters.

He found her lying on a stained and ruined couch, quite naked. Her legs were covered in blood. If he squinted and looked slightly away, he could almost pretend the red was her harem trousers. Almost.

She was pale and ill-looking. A thick river of saliva ran from between her deformed teeth and she was panting heavily, her eyes bloodshot and rolled back in her head. Jafar wiped her mouth delicately and forced her to look at him. Very gently, he lifted the tiara and placed it in her hair. It was a grotesque, wonderful sight.

"Will you marry me?" he asked her in a whisper.

"You're going to let me die, aren't you," Suzuki said blandly. He took one of her hands and raised it to his lips, but as he kissed it his expression was faraway.

At length he said, "Yes. But you knew that already. Will you marry me?"

Suzuki laughed throatily. "Of course. If you'd chosen to let me live, though, I would have said no." She grinned a rictus grin. "I truly admire you, Jafar. You're a real megalomaniac- far greater than those mere men who would not have let their little wives go to their agonising deaths. I truly, truly admire you." She lifted the hand he held to her own lips, and kissed the cruel fingers weakly.

She met his eye. "Don't tell Iago," she added. "If he knew what you'd done-"

"I know," he said, calmly. "I won't tell him." He leaned across to kiss her on the mouth, and when he drew back he saw there were tears in her eyes.

"I love you," she croaked. "It's true, and I hope it punishes you. I love you so much I'm going to die."

Jafar didn't reply, but three cool tears fell from his expressionless eyes onto her lips. That was enough for her- she knew then that her husband returned her love, and she could die, not in peace, but suitably avenged.

He left her rooms not long after this. That was the last they ever saw of one another.

Jafar was not present at the horror story of a birth, leaving Suzuki to finish her life in unbearable pain, without her husband and lover by her side. The physician was there, and sang to her in Arabic as the life bled and bulged out of her. The physician took what came from between her legs, swept out of the room and washed what he held clean, for now he had to keep the offspring alive, whereas the mother would pass on without any help from him.

Iago was the last person to see Suzuki alive. He came in through the open window, drawn helplessly by the blood-curdling shrieks of the mother in labour, and stood by her tossing feverish head whispering consoling, useless things. He cried a lot, hysterically and openly, as Suzuki finally died.


	13. final conundrum

Rasoul was surprised at about midnight by the Grand Vizier sweeping up to him, haggard and pale.

"Rasoul," he said hoarsely. "A physician is about to leave Lady Suzuki's chambers. I pray you use your discretion and kill him. No one is to know."

Rasoul was a little unpleasant, but he was loyal and efficient. "Yes, Vizier. I will do that now."

"Make it a quick death," Jafar hissed after him. "Make it an incognizant death. He has performed a strange service for me, and I would not wish him ill."

Having dealt with this, he stumbled to a lamp and tugged on the cord. It pained him briefly to note the lamp was influenced by the Oriental school of art, but he could not ponder long. The door grumbled open and he slid swiftly inside the secret passage, hurrying up the stairs to his laboratory.

Iago was waiting there, watching what looked suspiciously like a pile of swaddling. On closer inspection Jafar noticed a pile of black swaddling, and a pile of red.

Iago met his eyes. "Twins," he said simply.

Jafar sat down abruptly on the one piece of furniture in the lab. "No wonder she could not cope," he muttered to himself. "Japanese women have the narrowest of hips, and she was bearing Arabian twins- ah!" He stood up and walked over to his children, scooping them up into his arms awkwardly. Iago flapped sadly onto his shoulder. He was still crying gently.

"They- they're quite cute," Iago murmured. "Cootchie-coo?" The baby in black swaddling burped at him. "Human babies are disgusting," Iago announced.

Jafar laughed a tight, dry laugh. But at least it was a laugh, and it was infectious. The two started to laugh quite helplessly, until tears streamed down their faces and the dead stone walls echoed with the noise. He looked down at the twins, with something like affection in his face.

"The one in black is a boy," Iago explained. "The one in red is a girl."

"I could have worked that out," Jafar replied quietly. "Look, my daughter has her mother's finer bones, and her oval face and- see?- her almond eyes. Her eyes are so much more benign than my son's. You see my son's eyes? They are black instead of brown, and fathomless. You see how he has father's nose? It's a good nose."

The son yawned.

"Aw, look, he's got his father's attention span too!" Iago cooed.

"I will call the girl Basmah," Jafar said softly. "It means 'smile'. You see how perfect her mouth is?"

"Her mother would have liked that," Iago reflected sadly. "Yes, I see it. Then- you'll call the boy Talib?"

"'Seeker of the truth'," murmured Jafar. "Yes, we'll call him Talib. Talib and Basmah."

He jiggled his children cautiously. They seemed to like it, so he did it again. He gazed at them and they gazed back, mercilessly. He thought of Suzuki's corpse in her bedroom, drenched in red, lost to the world, the tiara still on her head. His daughter went to sleep, and his son gurgled.

"What am I going to do, Iago?" he asked helplessly. "What on earth am I going to do?"

((endness))


End file.
